Lexa Woods and Clarke Griffin: A Relationship Anthology
by paintthebrain
Summary: It's about connections. A compilation of moments detailing how all of the relationships in Clarke and Lexa's lives, including friends and family, teach them who they are as people and prepare them for the person they are meant to be with forever. SPOILER ALERT: It's each other. They are meant to be with each other. FOREVER.
1. Chapter 1

**Jake Griffin and the Girl(s) of his Dreams**

* * *

 **Duke** **University**

 **September 1981**

 **The Quad**

He didn't mean to meet her. She was the girl of his dreams. But that didn't matter. Dreams were just that. Dreams. Not meant to take shape. He had no intention of introducing himself. But sometimes dreams find their way into our waking lives.

He was walking to class. He had just stopped at the campus store to pick up a bottle of lemonade. It was still extremely hot for mid September and he had back to back 4 credit courses. That meant 6 hours in a dilapidated laboratory reserved for grad students., The one with no air conditioning. He knew he would need a little something to quench his thirst. He toyed with the idea of storing his beverage in liquid nitrogen to keep it cold just as he noticed there were only few people left on the quad.

Jake checked his watch. He was going to be late so he picked up the pace. He detected Abby, the aforementioned girl of his dreams, coming down the stairs perpendicular to his current trajectory. If she descended quickly enough, they were bound to cross paths. He began to panic just a bit. In his hurried and distracted state, his over-sized penny loafers gave out from beneath him and he fell face forward on to the pavement. The glass bottle shattering under his palm.

He stood up in shock. And looked directly at Abby. She was just staring at him. She wasn't making fun of him. She wasn't doing anything. Just staring. Jake ran his finger through his hair and he felt wetness on his face. Warm and sticky. "What the..?"

He pulled his hand down and looked at it. It was covered in blood. He turned it over so his palm faced up. The sight nearly made him gag. The bottle. Most of it was imbedded in his palm.

He was most definitely panicking now. He had no idea what to do. Just as he was starting to feel a little light headed, he felt someone lift his uninjured arm and put it over their shoulders. The rest was a blur. The next thing he remembers is being in the university's medical clinic with someone wrapping his wounded hand.

"That was a nasty fall," She says. "Are you ok?"

"Yes. I think so. How did I get here?"

"I brought you here."

Jake looks up and meets the most beautiful brown eyes he has ever seen. "Abby?" He says in shock.

She smiles. "You know who I am?"

Jake wishes he could just pass out right now instead of dying from embarrassment. "Uh, I've seen you around. Med Student, right?"

"How did you know?" A burgeoning smile dancing on her lips.

"I can tell by your handiwork." He lifts up his recently gauzed appendage. Ugh. Jake. Knock it off with your terrible puns.

Just as he was about to run out of the room screaming. She chuckles. "Well thank you very much…um…?"

"Jacob…Jake. Griffin." He squirms at his own formality, but relaxes a bit when he sees a full smile on Abby's mouth now.

"Abigail… Abby. Candide." Jake sees a twinkle in her eye. "Well, I think it's about time we wrap this up." She says and when the pun hits Jake full in the face, he immediately blurts out an invitation to a date.

She immediately agrees.

There was a first date. And then a Second. A first kiss. A first argument. Make up. Everything that comes with finding love.

Jake married Abby in June of the following year. His one true pairing. The girl of his dreams. The love of his life.

Well.

That was until he met her.

 **Washington** **DC**

 **November 4, 1987**

 **Memorial** **Hospital**

Abby looked exhausted. She just didn't have anything left to give. She leaned back and put her hands to her eyes as she began to cry. "I can't believe it, Jake. I just can't believe it." She let a sob escape. "After all this time. After all we've been through"

"I know" Jake said. He couldn't look at his wife. He was stupefied by his own thoughts. "It will be ok. I promise."

A woman, a nurse, entered the room. "Are you ready?" Abby pulled her hands down from her face and whipped a deadly look at the new occupant of the room, scrutinizing her with her bleary brown orbs. Then she looked at Jake with soft, pleading eyes. Jake nodded and walked towards the nurse with one last look at his wife of 5 years. Abby's face was awash in pure grief.

He walked with this nurse down the hall. She stopped to look at him, putting a hand on his shoulder. "She's fine. Don't worry." She forced Jake to meet her eyes.

"Clarke is fine."

And for the first time since Abby got pregnant, Jake Griffin could breathe.

"We just needed to do a few tests. Standard procedure for high risk pregnancies like this one and especially since, you know, the multiple miscarriages before." Her voice trailed off. "Are you ready to meet your daughter?"

He nodded.

They walked to the nursery. She placed a little bundle of pink blankets in his hands and Jake finally allowed himself to cry.

This was the other girl he had been dreaming about. Ever since he married Abby. Even after all the strife and misery they have had trying to conceive a child, he couldn't help but hope for this moment. As he looked down into her barely open blue eyes, he knew this was the other love of his life.


	2. Chapter 2

**Luna Bateau and the Night that Lasted for 34 Weeks**

 **New York City**

 **Late August 1985 12:42am**

 **The F train to Queens**

She had just finished an extended 2nd shift at a 24 hour Medical Research Clinic in Manhattan. She was sweaty and emotionally beat down. It was her job to assess incoming patients for experimental radiation trials. People would come in at all hours of the day and night. Referred to them by neighboring hospitals.

The doctors from those hospitals would deliver the devastating news with cold faces and unsympathetic ears. "I'm sorry, but your cancer is inoperable." Then as the family and patient were crying uncontrollably, they would reveal the little ace up their sleeve. "There is one more thing you can try." Essentially dumping the emotionally wounded on Luna.

So the family would find themselves at this clinic at midnight. Praying. Begging for just a sliver of hope. Seeking solace from such devastating news.

Luna would look at them in their sunken eyes and scoop them up into her sunshine and try to comfort them in ways that no one else could. This was the only place on the eastern seaboard using radation to cure cancer.

Nuclear medicine was a new and upcoming field. She had just finished her doctorate in May. She landed this gig right after she graduated. And she couldn't have been more thrilled to be working in such a dynamic research field.

So basically, she was their last hope. She would assess them. Check to see how far the cancer had spread, rate them, and with as much compassion as she could muster, she would tell them if they could live or if they would die.

She checked her appearance in the darken windows of the subway. At night, they were like mirrors. Even with the weight of a hundred lives on her shoulders she still looked vivacious. Beautiful mahogany locks quaffed and teased to perfection. Her stick straight bangs stood up to the trials of a 10 hour shift. And her olive skin glowed even against the harsh florescent lighting cascading down on them.

The brunette was tired of playing god. Of being the good Sheppard. Pouring her body, heart and soul to every person that walk through the doors of her clinic. She just needed a little release. No heart or soul. Just body.

It came in the form of a rather dapper looking man with creamy skin and a cocky smirk. His seemingly fit body was wrapped in a well tailored suit and crowned with a strong jaw and regal green eyes. He sat across from her on the subway, pretending to read, but really he was just unabashedly gazing at her.

When their eyes connected, his smirk grew into a disarming grin. "What brings you here at such a late hour?"

She matched his confidence. "I could ask you the same thing?"

He chuckled softly. "Touche." He looked away for a minute and then slowly raised his green eyes until Luna her heart rate begin to rise. "Just getting off work. You?"

"Same." She gave him her best suggestive glance

"Care for some company?" He asked non-chalantly. __Oh this will do. This will do__ _ _just__ _ _fine.__

She looked down to the seat beside her. And brought her gaze back up slowly, seductively. She smoldered and her half-lidded eyes connected with his.

He folded up his paper and quickly obliged.

There was a first laugh. And then a Second. The first time he touched her thigh. The first time she caressed his chin. Everything that comes with finding a one night stand.

When Luna stood to get off at her stop, he stood with her.

"Your place or mine?" And threw her his cocky grin

"Mine."

He was gone in the morning. Nothing left, but a satisfying feeling all over her body.

Well.

Except for one thing.

 **New York City**

 **May 15** **th** **, 1986**

 **Lenox Hill Medical Center**

She had decided within the first month that she would give up for adoption. There's was no way she would let this stop her now. She had pulled herself up by her boot straps and found a way into a medical program even though her family had been completely broke. She had made it into one of the top programs in the world, in the most competitive field, and to top it all off she did it while being a woman. Women could do advanced medicine. It was a thing. But for some reason the Boy's Club at Johns Hopkins University never got the memo. It had been exceptionally hard to get from one end of the hospital to the other without being called 'nurse' at least twice during the trip. And that was only if no male attending stopped her to give her his coffee order.

And now she had a shared lab with another amazing female doctor. Doing groundbreaking work.

There no way she was going to give up her hard-fought path to success over a single dalliance. Over one stupid agonizing mistake. No way.

One way.

The lilting cries of her new born filled the room. And a part of Luna ached. Whole sections of her body wished to reach out to her baby. Wished that keeping her was the right thing to do. But it wasn't. Someone else could give her a better life. Luna's career, her trials could lead to countless lives saved. With tears in her eyes, she caught a glimpse of a shock of dark hair before the doctor asked, "Confirm two weeks premature, yes? And name?"

"Yes, two weeks. And Lexa Allegra Bateau." Luna managed to squeak out the spelling of the name between choked sobs for the doctor. He nodded pointedly and handed her the paper as the nurses carried the infant from the room.

She signed the birth certificate. It was done.

For now.

"May we meet again, Little Lexa."

"Some day."


	3. Chapter 3

Anya Woods and the Parade of Babies, Infants, and Toddlers

* * *

 **White Plains** **, NY**

 **Early November 1986**

 **Future Family Adoption Agency**

"No. Not this one. She is too squishy." Anya looked up at her adoptive mother with a furrowed brow and her little tongue poking out from between her little white teeth. One finger pointing at the new born in the bassinette.

"Are you sure, Anya?" Indra looked to her husband and he just shook his head and let a soft smile fall on to his lips. This was the second new born they had visited. "Wouldn't you like to spend more time getting to know her?" Little Anya shook her head fervently they knew what were they were signing up for when they adopted Anya. "Maybe she would make a good little sister."

It's not that the Woods were letting their 8 year old adoptive daughter pick out the new addition to their family like some sofa or a puppy or something, but more like giving Anya a little control in the situation.

Lord knows little Anya had needed some control in her life. Her entire existence had been change, change, and more change. Moving from shelter to shelter with her homeless mother from birth to the age of 3. Being plucked from her mother and put into the foster care system. She had been thrust from foster home to foster home. The care givers not having the ability to understand her fiery nature or the patience it took to calm a child with such explosive reactions to small things. They weren't bad people or bad parents. It just takes a very specific person to understand what that much uncertainty does to a child. They just weren't able to give her what she needed. Time to heal. Time to trust.

Indra and Gustus Woods were those people. They were the perfect combination of stern and sweet, Strict and nurturing. They pushed her, but they also understood her. It had been a little over two years since they adopted Anya and in that time her tantrums decreased and her ability to be flexible with novel situations increased. But she still had a long way to go.

So when the Woods decided after much planning that they wanted to adopt a second child, they knew they were going to have to be patient. Very patient. Very VERY patient.

Because while Anya could adjust to small changes in routine, she was still not able to trust in an unknown future. She was not able to believe that when a new situation came up that the situation would have a positive outcome.

So, no, It wasn't so much that Anya was picking her new baby brother or sister, but more that she was accepting that he or she was coming. She was accepting the change. And the Woods' being the amazing parents that they were knew that when Anya had fully processed her fears and come to terms with how different her life would be, then and only then would Anya be able to make a decision.

 **Allentown** **, Pennsylvania**

 **Mid December, 1986**

 **Duquesne** **Adoption Center**

The halls were a sea foam green with vanilla accents. It was one of the nicer places they had visited. So when they brought her potential new brother in to meet her, Anya felt a little hopeful.

That didn't last long.

"He smells funny." Anya said as she approached her parents

Indra and Gustus had watched their daughter as she interacted with the toddler. She was still not quite ready yet, but getting there. So as she approached, Gustus knelt to meet her. He opened his mouth to check her certainty in her decision, but before he could, Anya raised a tiny hand. "Yes, Daddy. I am sure." And she turned on her heel, her child-sized Chuck Taylor's squeaking on the linoleum, and walked towards the exit.

Indra walked to the reception desk and said their farewells while Gustus caught up with his feisty daughter. He put a hand on her shoulder. At the touch, she turned to him, her eyes just completing the circuit in her sockets. Her signature eye roll. "Daaaad, I am suuuuure."

He chuckled. She certainly had a lot of personality. And he loved her for it. "That's not it, Anya. I wanted to let you know that it's ok. And to remind you that I love you. I love who you are, little one. It'll be ok. I promise."

She smiled, "Ok, Daddy. I love you too."

 **West Chester** **, Pennsylvania**

 **January, 1987**

 **Marion-Detwiler Memorial Orphanage**

"Her hair sticks out at funny angles and she pinched me."

 **Hershey** **, Pennsylvania**

 **Still January, 1987**

 **Milton** **Hershey School**

"He was ok. But his eyes were, what do you call it, Daddy?"

"Shifty! His eyes were shifty."

 **Havre De Grace, Maryland**

 **January (surprise, surprise), 1987**

 **A Baby Step Adoption Agency, INC**

She lasted nearly half an hour this time due to several games of tic tac toe. She seemed to be enjoying herself before she declared him to be a cheater even though she had won most of the games.

Gustus interlaced his fingers with his wife's as they watched their daughter move to the other side of the playroom and began to stack blocks by herself. He sighed, but Indra just smiled and squeezed his hand. "She's getting there, Gustus. She is making her peace. Won't be long now."

"I know." And he mirrored her smile.


	4. Chapter 4

Gustus and Indra Woods and the Mountain of Paperwork **GChapter Text**

 **Rising Sun, Maryland**

 **Late January 1987**

 **Cranberry Orphanage**

Gustus stood looking out the window. A blanket of fresh snow covered the grounds. The rolling hills of northern Maryland looked like something out of a fairy tale. Inside the derelict building, Indra sat observing Anya as she brought various Barbies to life inside of a an offensively pink dollhouse. Plastered all along the deteriorating walls of the office, were posters displaying a different kind of fairy tale – happy couples with their perfect children.

Indra and Gustus had been right. Anya was ready. Or maybe Lexa had made her ready. Whatever the reason, Anya had fallen in love and was only convinced to leave the infant after the social worker told her that she had a certain miniature plastic woman and it was waiting for the little girl in her office.

"What is an anchored adoption?" Gustus inquires, turning around from the window and stepping forward to where his wife sat. Little wires of his beard moving with his breath.

The social worker appeared to brace her self. "It's rare. Granted to special cases." She set her feet on the floor and tried to put on a show, but it was obvious she had done this before with little success. Lexa was a beautiful child. Lazy brown curls falling from every angle of her head. Expressive green eyes. She appeared even-tempered and smart even in her infancy. She didn't smile or laugh much, but when she did it was like seeing a shooting star and Indra and Gustus couldn't help but feel the whimsy in it. Normally newborns find family right away. And Lexa seemed so wonderful, but she was 8 months old now and still hadn't been adopted yet. So there must be a catch.

The social worker tucked a greying curl behind her ear and reached for a rather thick file on her desk. Stamped across the front in red letters: Lexa Allegra Bateau – Adoption Agreement. The husband and wife had seen a lot of these files in their pursuit to become parents. Lexa's was the thickest. By at least a half an inch

"It's like an open adoption, but the biological mother would have more than just visits. Lexa would be granted permission to return to her biological mother at anytime after the age of 12. Provided that both Lexa and the mother wanted that."

"So we would be foster parents?" Indra did not like where was this going.

"Yes. And no." The social worker knew what was coming. When people decided to make a family, they wanted it to be forever. "There is a chance that you would not have sole custody of Lexa. I know it's complicated, but in most cases this kind of agreement was made because of the biological parents and not the child."

"That doesn't seem right." Indra said not looking up because Anya had wandered over to her requesting help putting a sweater on the Barbie. Remembering Anya's disorientating past, she added. "Stability is important."

"Between you and I, Mrs. Woods, I agree. But in cases like these, it is believed that the additional guidance from the biological parent would be an asset to the child."

Sensing the question in the couple before her, the social worker continued, "They are usually someone of influence that has made something of him or herself and regretted having to give up the child for adoption."

Gustus 's eyes scanned the packet of paperwork. His eyes were so brown they appeared black, but there was warmth in them when he looked to his daughter and then met the gaze of his wife. They both had known what they were going to decide the moment little Lexa had wrapped her tiny hand around Anya's finger. They were committed no matter the obstacles. "Alright," he said, "What's it going to take?"

The social worker smiled and handed over the heavy packet.

 **The Woods Residence**

 **February - June 1987**

 **Lancaster, Pennsylvania**

There were so many home visits with varying members of the agency. Unannounced check ups from the social worker. Multiple interviews with every member of the Woods clan. A thorough scrutiny of their lives and abilities as parents. And the paperwork had only just begun.

It wasn't perfect. It wasn't a fairytale.

It was better.

Because Lexa was here now.


End file.
